


When the Lights Go Out (Run Away With Me)

by couragetofight



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 10:52:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17723801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couragetofight/pseuds/couragetofight
Summary: River Song is a part of the Doctor, a tenuous connection to the man she had sacrificed her life to, a woman who from what Clara understood, had done the same. She had to find her – to rescue her if that was possible.In which two women reclaim the lives that they had each given to the Doctor - and possibly find solace with each other along the way.





	When the Lights Go Out (Run Away With Me)

It takes a long time for her to stop looking over her shoulder, worried about someone coming after her. Whether it is the Doctor or the Timelords she worries about, she’s never really sure, but does not stop her. It takes even longer for her to get used to existing without a heartbeat, without the need to take a breath – she is frozen after all, always feeling the chill of the air on that street just before she died. For a long while, she and Me just run. Sometimes they save something or someone, and then they keep running, whether to something or away from it she is never sure either.  

 

She’s been alive – or existed, at the very least, for 307 earth years when she stops listening for her own heartbeat. It is another five years before she first dreams – or remembers rather, for she doesn’t dream anymore – a woman that she had met with Madame Vastra, trapped like a book on a shelf in the biggest library in the universe.

 

River Song is her name, and she is very much real – as Clara remembers her, sifting through her half-lived lifetimes and 200 years of her real one, she knows what she must do. River Song is a part of the Doctor, a tenuous connection to the man she had sacrificed her life to, a woman who from what Clara understood, had done the same. She had to find her – to rescue her if that was possible.

 

Luckily, the TARDIS has extensive databanks – enough that there’s plenty of information on The Library, with an uppercase L. She works with her own ship better than she ever had with the Doctor’s TARDIS, had formed a bond closer than the grudging respect his TARDIS had developed after she had stepped into his time stream. Even without Me, who had departed some 50 years ago, she was able to navigate the ship to the planet, landing in, well some point in the 52nd century, though the readings weren’t quite working correctly.

 

The planet outside the doors of the TARDIS is silent, save the breaths that Clara doesn’t _technically_ need to take, but has never quite shaken the habit of when she arrives somewhere new. She knows what happened here – her TARDIS and the Doctor’s sync on a regular basis, when they happen to pass each other by. (Sometimes Clara opens the doors and watches the blue box as it floats through space, imagining all the trouble that the man inside could be getting up to. She wonders if it’s the same man sometimes, or if there’s a thirteenth face that she does not know yet. She imagines that face sometimes, though it always changes – sharp and angular, or square and soft, or any multitude of shape and size. That man, whoever he is, always has the same eyes, old and despairing and no matter how he tries to disguise it, unbearably kind.)

 

She’s piloted her TARDIS directly to the core of the planet, for though she reckons that the Vashta Nerada cannot harm her never-changing body, she doesn’t particularly want to take the risk. The core of the planet glows, and for a moment or two, she stands there, in awe of the threads of data and energy that wind themselves around each other. She has a mission though, and 300 years of life, an infinity of lives hovering at the edge of her consciousness and a rather handy upload make computers resonate with Clara.

 

River Song has been saved to the Library’s data core just as 4022 people had been saved a century and a half ago. The only problem that remained was how exactly to get her out. Fortunately for Clara, the mainframe is run by a sentient computer – a little girl who had grown up quite a lot in the past hundred years. She is no longer in need of a mother, especially as she can see that River yearns to leave this utopian existence - inexistence really – behind. She had been waiting for this day, preparing everything necessary to send River away – though she had assumed that it would be a crazy haired man, or perhaps the gray-haired scot that River told her about sometimes who would come to sweep her away.

 

It was only a matter of time after Clara had arrived and announced her intentions – intentions that included a TARDIS and all of time and space, before Charlotte Lux was activating the teleport system and River Song, after a century of existing as an energy signature – a disembodied consciousness – was knit back into a physical form some hundreds of feet above them.

 

Moments later – or before, who could say, a familiar wheezing accompanied the appearance out of thin air, of a dark wooden book case which seemed not at all out of place on a planet that was called The Library. The books and shelves swung suddenly outward even while leaving the frame of the shelf behind it, and Clara Oswald stepped out just as a few metres away, a woman began to form from nothing.

 

If Clara had still been completely human – that is, if she had still needed to – she would have held her breath in this moment, for the process of teleportation always seemed precarious to her, and especially now, given that River had not existed in a physical form for a century at least – who knew what could go wrong in this moment.

 

And so it was that the first thing that new eyes saw was a concerned woman, clad in a leather jacket and leaning against a shelf, her brow furrowed. It was only a fleeting glance however, because just as new eyes had to remember how to see again, her new legs were not at all used to standing, and falling to her knees, River registered every sense that she had not experienced in a hundred years, the sensation half exhilarating, half agonizing.

 

There were hands gripping her arms, keeping her somewhat upright – that was a new sensation as well.

 

“Hello River” a voice – belonging to the hands – said to her.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey folks, hope you enjoyed this first chapter. This is an idea thats been brewing for a while, so I'm happy to be able to share it with you! Please let me know what you think in the comments or on my tumblr @ couragetofight.  
> This is a River/Clara fic primarily, but there will be an appearance or two from 13 and possibly the rest of the fam.  
> Title from Carly Rae Jepsen's Run Away With Me


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